Press releases 2005http://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2005?created=
CERN press office - press releasesenCERN concludes year of strong progress towards the LHChttp://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2005/12/cern-concludes-year-strong-progress-towards-lhc
16 Dec 2005
<div class="field-body">
<p>Geneva, 16 December 2005. Speaking at the 135th session of the CERN<sup>1</sup> Council, the Organization's Director General, Robert Aymar hailed a year of impressive progress towards the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project, scheduled to start-up in 2007. “In one year, we have made great progress,” he said. “The challenge is not over, of course, but we have great confidence of maintaining the schedule for start-up in 2007.”</p>
<p>The LHC is the flagship project for the world's particle physics community. Experiments at the LHC will allow physicists to complete a journey that started with Newton's description of gravity. Gravity acts on mass, but so far science is unable to explain why the fundamental particles have the masses they have. Experiments at the LHC may provide the answer. LHC experiments will also probe the mysterious missing mass and dark energy of the universe – visible matter seems to account for just 5% of what must exist. They will investigate the reason for nature's preference for matter over antimatter, and they will probe matter as it existed at the very beginning of time.</p>
<p>Dr Aymar's remarks come after a year during which the delay imposed by repairing defects in the system that will distribute cryogenic cooling fluids around the LHC has been largely recovered. The LHC's cryogenic system is now well advanced, and installation of the LHC's magnets is progressing rapidly. Almost 1000 of the 1232 dipole magnets have been delivered to CERN, and over 200 magnets are already installed in the LHC's underground tunnel. “It’s been an exceptional year,” said LHC project leader Lyn Evans, “there has been a lot of effort to recover from a difficult situation 12 months ago, and all key objectives for 2005 have been met.” Magnets are currently being installed at the rate of 20 per week, a rate that needs to increase to 25 per week in 2006 to maintain the LHC start-up schedule for 2007. A review of the schedule is planned for Spring 2006.</p>
<p>Dr Aymar also reminded the Council that 2005 is World Year of Physics, and drew attention to a number of events that CERN has organized through the year to bring the excitement of fundamental science to a young audience. These include a World Wide Webcast bringing together scientists and audiences from around the Globe for a 12-hour celebration of science on 1 December, and the Science on Stage conference for teachers, which brought over 400 high-school teachers to CERN for one week in November. He also informed delegates that CERN's new visitor and networking centre, the Globe of Science and Innovation, opened its doors to the public in September. The Globe will host a new permanent exhibition about CERN science, scheduled for inauguration in 2007 to coincide with LHC start-up.</p>
</div>
<h3 class="field-label">
Footnote(s) </h3>
<div class="field-footnote footnote-item">
1. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status. </div>
Fri, 16 Dec 2005 08:00:00 +0000coluanai702 at http://press.web.cern.chA step forward for open access publishinghttp://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2005/12/step-forward-open-access-publishing
14 Dec 2005
<div class="field-body">
<p>Geneva, 14 December 2005. A landmark decision has been reached on the future direction of scientific publishing. At a meeting hosted by CERN<sup>1</sup> on 7-8 December, representatives of several major physics publishers, European particle physics laboratories, learned societies, funding agencies and authors from Europe and the US, came together for the first time to promote open access publishing. Among the results of the meeting was the formation of a task force mandated to bring about action by 2007.</p>
<p>Strongly linked with progress in digitised documentation and electronic networking, open access is a hot topic for universities, publishers, and even governments. There are two approaches to open access. The particle physics community is already among the leaders of one: the institutional repository approach through which libraries such as CERN’s make their own information freely available on the Internet. The other approach is to work with scientific publishers to develop open access to the journals themselves.</p>
<p>Open access aims to change the traditional publishing model whereby publishers finance journals through reader subscriptions to a model where electronic access to journals will be free and the publishers will be financed by the authors. The current publishing model, which has stood the test of time for at least two centuries, ensures quality through the peer review process. However, since journal subscriptions are expensive, the model favours the richer universities and institutions. The challenge for open access is to preserve the quality assurance role guaranteed by academic publishers, whilst broadening access to the information, thereby bringing greater benefit to society.</p>
<p>Eighty participants attended the meeting, which follows CERN's signature of the Berlin Declaration<sup>2</sup> in May 2004, and takes advantage of the particle physics community’s heightened awareness of open access. The creation of the open access task force comes at a crucial time for the particle physics community. In 2007, CERN will launch the field’s new flagship facility, the Large Hadron Collider, and wishes to make the results as widely available as possible.</p>
<p>Commenting on the meeting, CERN's Director General Robert Aymar said: “The next phase of LHC experiments at CERN can be a catalyst for a rapid change in the particle physics communication system. CERN's articles are already freely available through its own web site but this is only a partial solution. We wish for the publishing and archiving systems to converge for a more efficient solution which will benefit the global particle physics community.”</p>
<p><a href="http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=482">Full details of the meeting</a> are available on the web.</p>
</div>
<h3 class="field-label">
Footnote(s) </h3>
<div class="field-footnote footnote-item">
1. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status. </div>
<div class="field-footnote footnote-item">
2. Berlin Declaration [extract]: Supporting the Transition to the Electronic Open Access Paradigm Our organizations are interested in the further promotion of the new open access paradigm to gain the most benefit for science and society. Therefore, we intend to make progress by encouraging our researchers/grant recipients to publish their work according to the principles of the open access paradigm. encouraging the holders of cultural heritage to support open access by providing their resources on the Internet. developing means and ways to evaluate open access contributions and online-journals in order to maintain the standards of quality assurance and good scientific practice. advocating that open access publication be recognized in promotion and tenure evaluation. </div>
Wed, 14 Dec 2005 08:00:00 +0000coluanai705 at http://press.web.cern.chBeyond Einsteinhttp://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2005/11/beyond-einstein
18 Nov 2005
<div class="field-body">
<p>Geneva, 18 November 2005. CERN<sup>1</sup> and the World Year of Physics International Steering Committee are partnering with some of the world's leading physics laboratories, science museums and technology partners to present a twelve-hour live webcast to celebrate Einstein and look beyond the World Year of Physics 2005.</p>
<p>This unprecedented event will be broadcast live on the Internet from a webcast studio in the CERN Globe of Science and Innovation. Similar locations around the world are connected via Tandberg videoconference: the Telecom Future Centre (Venice), Imperial College London, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Chicago), the Exploratorium (San Francisco) hosting scientists from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the Bloomfield Science Museum (Jerusalem) and the National Science Education Centre (Taipei).</p>
<p>From the seven main platforms, internauts will be taken on a world tour to other physics laboratories and science museums visiting virtually all the time zones of the planet, from Europe to America, from Asia to Tasmania and as far south as Antarctica.</p>
<p>The programme includes subjects such as relativity, gravitational waves, mass and gravity, antimatter and neutrinos, along with the mysteries remaining in Einstein’s physics, and the technologies derived from it. A global audience will be able to discuss the impact of Einstein’s discoveries and look beyond them with top-level physicists such as Stephen Hawking and Paul Davies, and with physics Nobel laureates David Gross, Murray Gell-Mann and Gerard ‘t Hooft, connected from the 2005 Solvay physics Conference in Brussels (17:10 CET).</p>
<p>Einstein was also a refugee, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will discuss the positive contribution refugees can make to their society of adoption.</p>
<p>Peter Kirstein from University College London, who was instrumental in the Internet’s early evolution, will be joined by fellow Internet pioneer Bob Kahn, and Robert Cailliau who played a key role at the birth of the Web, to explore the role that basic science plays in the evolution of information technology.</p>
<p>Nobel laureate Leon Lederman will host a show live from Fermilab, featuring interviews with young physicists, fun physics demonstrations and live music (21:00 CET).</p>
<p>Other highlights include the award ceremony of the Pirelli Relativity Challenge from the Telecom Future Centre in Venice (15:30 CET), and an online quiz for 15 to 19 year-olds. Based on three top mysteries stemming from Einstein’s theories, this competition will offer Apple iBook and Apple iPod prizes to the winners.</p>
<p>Major technology providers are supporting CERN in this unprecedented event. Tandberg, a global leader in video communication will be responsible for the connection of the seven locations by videoconference. A multipoint-videoconferencing system will be in use, which means that each of the seven participants will always be able to see the six other partners on screen. Telecom Italia is providing global webcast streaming, the INFN (Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics) Multimedia Service is providing webcast encoding. Cisco Systems, a leader in networking for the Internet, has joined the World Year of Physics International Steering Committee, the European Physical Society and the European Science Centre Network, ESCITE, in supporting the science laboratories with their respective expertise and in assembling a compelling programme.</p>
<p><b>Watch the live webcast and take part in the online quiz</b></p>
<p>Thursday 1 December<br />
12:00 to 24:00 CET<br /><a href="http://www.cern.ch/beyondeinstein">http://www.cern.ch/beyondeinstein</a></p>
<p>The Beyond Einstein partners will be available to answer the press and media questions at a dedicated preview event on the Web on Monday 28 November at 17:00 CET. Join from <a href="http://www.cern.ch/beyondeinstein/press">http://www.cern.ch/beyondeinstein/press</a>.</p>
<p><b>For more information on the webcast contact:</b></p>
<ul><li>
General information: <b>Paola Catapano</b>, <a href="mailto:Monica.de.pasquale@cern.ch">paola.catapano@cern.ch</a> tel. +41 76 487 36 17</li>
<li>
Technical information: <b>Silvano De Gennaro</b>, <a href="mailto:silvano.de.gennaro@cern.ch">silvano.de.gennaro@cern.ch</a> tel. +41 76 487 41 38</li>
</ul><p><b>Journalists wishing to join the web press event on November 28 should contact:</b></p>
<ul><li>
<b>Neil Calder</b>, <a href="mailto:neil.calder@SLAC.Stanford.EDU">neil.calder@SLAC.Stanford.EDU</a></li>
</ul><p><b>Journalists wishing to join the event in the CERN Globe of Science and Innovation in Geneva on December 1 should contact:</b></p>
<ul><li>
<b>Renilde Vanden Broeck</b>, <a href="mailto:Renilde.Vanden.Broeck@cern.ch">Renilde.Vanden.Broeck@cern.ch</a></li>
</ul><p><b>Media contacts</b></p>
<ul><li>
<a href="http://www.fnal.gov/">Fermilab</a>: <b>Kurt Riesselmann</b>, <a href="mailto:kurtr@fnal.gov">kurtr@fnal.gov</a>, +1-630-840-5681</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.ic.ac.uk/">Imperial College London</a>: <b>David Colling</b>, <a href="mailto:d.colling@imperial.ac.uk">d.colling@imperial.ac.uk</a>, +44 777619 63 61</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.ntsec.gov.tw/ntsec-english/index.asp">National Science Education Center Taipei</a>: <b>Paoti Chang</b>, <a href="mailto:pchang@phys.ntu.edu.tw">pchang@phys.ntu.edu.tw</a>, +886 2 33665151</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.pirelliaward.com/einstein.html">Pirelli Relativity Challenge</a>: <b>Massimo Armeni</b>, <a href="mailto:massimo.armeni@pirelli.com">massimo.armeni@pirelli.com</a>, +39 06 69517610</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.slac.stanford.edu/">Stanford Linear Accelerator Center</a>: <b>Neil Calder</b>, <a href="mailto:neil.calder@SLAC.Stanford.EDU">neil.calder@SLAC.Stanford.EDU</a>, +1 650-926-8707</li>
<li>
The <a href="http://tena4.vub.ac.be/23Solvay/qsst/">2005 Solvay Conference in Physics</a>, Brussels: <b>Marc Henneaux</b>, <a href="mailto:henneaux@ulb.ac.be">henneaux@ulb.ac.be</a>, +32 2 650 5423 - 5816</li>
<li>
The <a href="http://www.mada.org.il/english/">Bloomfield Science Museum Jerusalem</a>: <b>Varda Gur Ben Shitrit</b>, <a href="mailto:varda@mada.org.il">varda@mada.org.il</a>, +972-2-6544884</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.unhcr.org/">United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees</a>: Martine Pochon, <a href="mailto:pochon@unhcr.org">pochon@unhcr.org</a>, +41 22 7397738</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.exploratorium.edu/">The Exploratorium, San Francisco</a>: <a id="OLE_LINK2" name="OLE_LINK2"><b>Linda Dackman</b>, </a><a href="mailto:lindad@exploratorium.edu">lindad@exploratorium.edu</a>, +1-415-561-0363</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.wyp2005.org/">World Year of Physics</a> International Steering Committee: <b>Ophelia Fornari</b>, <a href="mailto:o.fornari@eps.org">o.fornari@eps.org</a>, +33 3 89 32 94 48</li>
</ul> </div>
<h3 class="field-label">
Footnote(s) </h3>
<div class="field-footnote footnote-item">
1. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status. </div>
Fri, 18 Nov 2005 08:00:00 +0000coluanai706 at http://press.web.cern.chCERN demonstrates commitment to goals of the World Summit for the Information Societyhttp://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2005/11/cern-demonstrates-commitment-goals-world-summit-information-society
17 Nov 2005
<div class="field-body">
<p>Geneva, 17 November 2005. Speaking today to international delegates meeting in Tunis for the second <a href="http://www.smsitunis2005.org/plateforme/index.php?lang=en">World Summit on the Information Society</a> (WSIS), CERN<sup>1</sup> Director-General Robert Aymar highlighted some of the important achievements that CERN has contributed to since the first summit in Geneva in 2003. At the first summit, CERN worked actively to ensure that the fundamental role of science and technology in the information society was acknowledged in the agenda of the WSIS. Since then, the Laboratory has undertaken a number of actions to demonstrate its commitment to WSIS goals, including promoting the movement for Open Access to scientific information and helping to develop open-source software for the international scientific community. CERN also supports, and recently hosted a workshop on, research and education networking in Africa. This resulted in broad support for the construction of a research and education network for Africa to facilitate international scientific collaboration.</p>
<p>Concerning the Open Access movement, CERN advocates the establishment of open electronic repositories for all branches of publicly financed sciences in all countries. In March, CERN's executive board endorsed an open access policy for all the Laboratory's results. CERN considers that the results of publicly financed science should be a common public good.</p>
<p>In the area of open-source software, an example of CERN's commitment is the release in March of Scientific Linux 4.0. This popular operating system for science has been developed by the Scientific Linux development team, a collaboration of scientists and computer professionals from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Chicago, USA, and CERN. The EU-funded <a href="http://public.eu-egee.org/">EGEE</a> (Enabling Grids for E-sciencE) project, led by CERN and with 70 institutional partners, has also released a first version of gLite, an open source middleware for operating a global Grid of scientific computing centres. Grid computing is based on the sharing of resources by scientific organizations around the world to provide the huge computing power needed for some projects. It is a technology with potentially revolutionary implications for the information society, and is often compared to the World Wide Web, which was initially developed at CERN for scientific use.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://event-africa-networking.web.cern.ch/event-africa-networking/default.html">International Workshop on African Research and Education Networking</a>, organised by CERN, the <a href="http://www.unu.edu/">UN University</a> and the International Telecommunications Union (<a href="http://www.itu.int/home/">ITU</a>) on 25-27 September, was a first of its kind in terms of its broad scope and level of North-South participation. It brought together key stakeholders from African academic and research institutions, international organizations, funding agencies, grass-roots initiatives, and industry representatives. Concrete recommendations on improving African networking infrastructure, derived from the workshop, provided a basis for preparations of the current WSIS, influencing the summit's agenda on this issue of key importance to Africa.</p>
<p>"CERN's community of 6500 researchers of 85 nationalities has benefited from the global Information Society for many years," said Robert Aymar. "Through the WSIS process, the scientific community, at CERN and elsewhere, is sharing its experience to help bring the benefits of ICT to society as a whole. We urge all nations to support the connection of all universities around the world to the international networks for open exchange and collaboration between scientists everywhere."</p>
</div>
<h3 class="field-label">
Footnote(s) </h3>
<div class="field-footnote footnote-item">
1. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status. </div>
Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:00:00 +0000coluanai709 at http://press.web.cern.chCERN awarded high-performance computing prize at Supercomputing 2005http://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2005/11/cern-awarded-high-performance-computing-prize-supercomputing-2005
16 Nov 2005
<div class="field-body">
<p>Geneva, 16 November 2005. CERN<sup>1</sup> has received the High Performance Computing (HPC) Public Awareness Award at a ceremony at Supercomputing 2005 in Seattle this week. Supercomputing 2005 is the foremost international conference for HPC. The award was presented by HPCwire, the leading HPC publication, as one of their 2005 Editors' Choice Awards, a category where the winner is determined by a panel of recognized HPC luminaries and contributing editors from industry. The award citation is for 'Outstanding Achievement in Creating Public Awareness for the Contributions of High Performance Computing', and reflects CERN's high visibility in scientific computing through its lead role in some of the world's largest and most ambitious international Grid projects.</p>
<p>CERN is leading the LHC Computing Grid (LCG) project<sup>2</sup> to build a Grid for the huge data storage and processing requirements of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), CERN's new flagship facility, which is scheduled to start operation in 2007. The LCG project already involves more than 150 sites in over 30 countries worldwide. Four experiments at the LHC (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb) are expected to produce some 15 Petabytes (millions of Gigabytes) each year, which will need the equivalent of 100,000 of today's processors to be analysed in search of elusive fundamental particles. CERN is also coordinating the EU-funded Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) project<sup>3</sup>, which involves 70 institutional partners in Europe, the US and Russia. EGEE aims to provide a production Grid infrastructure for all sciences. Already, over 20 applications from scientific domains including Earth observation, climate prediction, petroleum exploration and drug discovery are running on this infrastructure. CERN has also pioneered a novel form of industrial partnership, the CERN openlab, with partners Enterasys, HP, IBM, Intel and Oracle, which is testing and validating new hardware and software solutions from the partners in CERN's advanced Grid environment.</p>
<p>Receiving the prize on behalf of CERN, David Foster, head of CERN's network and communications group, said, "this is a significant honour for CERN, and I really feel that all our institutional and industrial partners in LCG, EGEE and CERN openlab deserve to share in the credit for this. The Grid technology that is being deployed for the LHC is inevitably something that spans many institutions, all of whom are contributing to the broader public awareness concerning this new approach to high performance computing." Tom Tabor, publisher of HPCwire, said, "HPCwire's Editors' Choice Awards indicate where those on the front lines of both commercial and academic high performance computing believe the cutting edge of technology lies. An overwhelming number of responses selected CERN for the Public Awareness category. This reflects CERN's outstanding image as an organization that pushes the boundaries of scientific computing."</p>
<p><b>Useful Links:</b></p>
<ul class="plain"><li>
<a href="http://www.cern.ch/lcg">LCG public website</a></li>
<li>
<a href="http://public.eu-egee.org/">EGEE public website</a></li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.cern.ch/openlab">CERN openlab public website</a></li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.gridcafe.org/">GridCafé</a>, CERN's public outreach website on Grids</li>
</ul><p><b>For more information contact:</b></p>
<ul class="plain"><li>
François Grey</li>
<li>
IT Communications Team</li>
<li>
IT Department, CERN</li>
<li>
Tel +41 22 767 1483</li>
<li>
Fax +41 22 767 1070</li>
<li>
Email: <a href="mailto:Francois.Grey@cern.ch">Francois.Grey@cern.ch</a></li>
</ul> </div>
<h3 class="field-label">
Footnote(s) </h3>
<div class="field-footnote footnote-item">
1. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status. </div>
<div class="field-footnote footnote-item">
2. The mission of the LHC Computing Grid (LCG) project is to build and maintain a data storage and analysis infrastructure for the entire high energy physics community that will use the LHC. Discovering new fundamental particles and analysing their properties with the LHC accelerator is possible only through statistical analysis of the massive amounts of data gathered by the LHC detectors ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb, and detailed comparison with compute-intensive theoretical simulations. </div>
<div class="field-footnote footnote-item">
3. The EGEE project, funded by the EC initially for two years, aims to build on recent advances in grid technology and develop a service grid infrastructure which is available to scientists 24 hours a day. The project aims to provide researchers in both academia and industry with access to major computing resources, independent of their geographic location. The EGEE project identifies a wide-range of scientific disciplines and their applications and supports a number of them for deployment. </div>
Wed, 16 Nov 2005 08:00:00 +0000coluanai711 at http://press.web.cern.chSetting the stage for science in schoolshttp://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2005/11/setting-stage-science-schools
10 Nov 2005
<div class="field-body">
<p>Geneva, 10 November 2005 - How can you weigh the Earth with a straw, a paperclip and a piece of thread? Why don’t we really know what we see? How can a juggling act explain mathematics?</p>
<p>These are but a few of the on-stage activities that will be shown at the EIROforum<sup>1</sup> Science on Stage Festival, to be held from 21 to 25 November at CERN<sup>2</sup> in Geneva (Switzerland). With support from the European Commission, this international festival brings together around 500 science educators from 29 European countries to show how fascinating and entertaining science can be.</p>
<p><cite>"Science is fun! This is what this week-long event will show by presenting innovative methods of teaching science and demonstrations"</cite>, says Helen Wilson from the European Space Agency and co-ordinator of the event.</p>
<p><cite>"At the festival, teachers have the chance to view things from a new perspective, to be entertained and enchanted by science"</cite>, says Rolf Landua, Head of Education at CERN and Chairman of the event. <cite>"As well as taking to the stage, they set up stalls in fair-like surroundings to share their most successful teaching tricks."</cite></p>
<p>Workshops on themes as varied as "flying on stage", "the theatre of science", or "stem cell research" and "gamma-ray bursts", will give the attendees – teachers and other science educators – the chance to discuss and come up with solutions to the problem of growing disinterest for science in Europe.</p>
<p><cite>"A key element of the Science on Stage concept is to give teachers an up-to-date 'insider's view' of what is happening in big science, to tell them about new, highly diverse and interesting career opportunities for their pupils, and to create a European atmosphere where bright young people can meet and interact"</cite>, says <em>Colin Carlile</em>, Director General of the Institut Laue-Langevin and current chairman of the EIROforum.</p>
<p>At the end of the festival, the <strong>European Science Teaching Awards</strong> will be presented. The names of the winners will be made public on the Science on Stage web site at 12:00 CET on Friday 25 November. In addition, highlights of the Festival will feature in a new "Science in School" journal, to be launched by EIROforum in 2006. The new journal is dedicated to best teaching materials and practices in Europe.</p>
<p>The festival is the final event of a two-year-long programme of events that has taken place in virtually every European country and from which delegates have been selected for their outstanding projects promoting science.</p>
<p>The event continues the vastly successful "Physics on Stage" festivals organised by EIROforum organisations in 2000, 2002 and 2003.</p>
<p>Journalists are cordially invited to take part in this unique European event. The detailed programme and practical details are available on the <a href="http://www.cern.ch/sos">Science on Stage web site</a>.</p>
<p><strong>For more information on the Science on Stage Festival, contact:</strong></p>
<table><tbody><tr><td>
<p>Helen Wilson<br />
ESTEC/European Space Agency<br />
Noordwijk, The Netherlands<br />
Phone: +31 71 565 5518<br />
Email: <a href="mailto:Helen.Wilson@esa.int">Helen.Wilson@esa.int</a></p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Rolf Landua<br />
CERN<br />
Geneva, Switzerland<br />
Phone:+ 41 22 767 2051<br />
Email: <a href="mailto:rolf.landua@cern.ch">rolf.landua@cern.ch</a></p>
</td>
</tr></tbody></table><p><strong>For journalist accreditation, please contact:</strong></p>
<table><tbody><tr><td>
<p>Renilde Vanden Broeck<br />
CERN<br />
Geneva, Switzerland<br />
Phone: +41 22 767 2141<br />
Email: <a href="mailto:Renilde.Vanden.Broeck@cern.ch">Renilde.Vanden.Broeck@cern.ch</a></p>
</td>
</tr></tbody></table><p><strong>For more information on each of the organisations, please contact each of the press offices:</strong></p>
<table><tbody><tr><td>
<p>CERN<br /><a href="mailto:Renilde.Vanden.Broeck@cern.ch">Renilde Vanden Broeck</a><br />
Tel: +41 22 767 2141</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>ESO<br /><a href="mailto:hboffin@eso.org">Henri Boffin</a><br />
Tel: +49 89 3200 62 22</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>EFDA<br /><a href="mailto:jennifer.hay@ukaea.org.uk">Jennifer Hay</a><br />
Tel: +44 1235 466 232</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>ESRF<br /><a href="mailto:capellas@esrf.fr">Montserrat Capellas</a><br />
Tel: +33 476 88 26 63</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>EMBL<br /><a href="mailto:sherwood@embl-heidelberg.de">Sarah Sherwood</a><br />
Tel: +49 6221 387 125</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>ILL<br /><a href="mailto:vauquois@ill.fr">Françoise Vauquois</a><br />
Tel: +33 476 20 71 07</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>ESA<br /><a href="mailto:media@esa.int">Media Relations</a><br />
Tel: +33 1 53 69 71 55</p>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr></tbody></table><p> </p>
</div>
<h3 class="field-label">
Footnote(s) </h3>
<div class="field-footnote footnote-item">
1. EIROforum is a collaboration between seven European intergovernmental scientific research organizations. As world leaders within their respective fields, the EIROforum member organizations constitute the vanguard of European science, enabling European scientists to engage in truly cutting-edge research and be competitive on a global scale. These organizations have a vital role to play in the future of European research. EIROforum is composed of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, CERN; the European Fusion Development Agreement, EFDA, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, EMBL, the European Space Agency, ESA, the European Southern Observatory, ESO, the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, ESRF, and the Institut Laue–Langevin, ILL. The EIROforum Science on Stage Festival is supported in part by the European Commission’s Science and Society Programme in the framework of the NUCLEUS project. </div>
<div class="field-footnote footnote-item">
2. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world’s leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status. </div>
Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:47:18 +0000coluanai713 at http://press.web.cern.chGlobal e-Infrastructure reports landmark results at European conferencehttp://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2005/10/global-e-infrastructure-reports-landmark-results-european-conference
28 Oct 2005
<div class="field-body">
<p>Geneva, 28 October 2005. Today marked the completion of a major conference organized by the Enabling Grids for E-sciencE project, which is coordinated by CERN<a href="#CERN"><sup>1</sup></a> and co-funded by the European Commission, where a number of key results were reported on the road to achieving a global Grid infrastructure for science. It was announced at the conference that the EGEE infrastructure, which spans over 150 sites in Europe, the Americas and Asia, had surpassed 2 million computing jobs, or the equivalent of over 1000 years of processing on a single PC.</p>
<p>The EGEE infrastructure, which is linked by Europe's GEANT high-speed communications network, as well as similar networks for scientific research around the world, spans across 40 countries. Only 18 months after the launch of the EGEE project, well over 1000 users around the globe are using the EGEE infrastructure to accelerate their computing tasks, which cover some six scientific domains and some 20 major applications, ranging from particle physics to drug discovery for combating malaria.</p>
<p>The fourth EGEE conference was held at the <em>Palazzo dei Congressi</em>, and hosted by the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) in the centre of the historic city of Pisa. It featured speakers from the international scientific and IT community, local authorities and the European Commission. The theme of this event, "Global and Persistent e-Infrastructure for Scientific Knowledge in the 21st Century", was explored during the course of the week through plenary sessions as well as more focused parallel discussions, which gave participants the opportunity to discuss a wide range of issues related to Grid computing and multi-science research infrastructures.</p>
<p>"The results for EGEE so far are very satisfying, and well beyond our initial expectations," commented Fabrizio Gagliardi, the EGEE project director at CERN "clearly the Grid is a service that will allow many scientists to do calculations that were once hugely time consuming much faster". He gave the example of a group working on drug discovery for malaria that had managed to reduce computer simulations of 46 million potential drug candidates, the equivalent of 80 years on a single PC, to just a few months work on the Grid. During a visit to CERN today, to be briefed on the use of Grids by CERN, Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, said "On hearing about EGEE's achievements, I wanted to see for myself some of the practical benefits that this Grid technology is providing. I'm very satisfied to see such a major step forward in collaborative computing between scientists across Europe and even on a global scale. Europe's strategic investments in Grids and in the GEANT network infrastructure are certainly already paying dividends."</p>
<p>The <a href="http://public.eu-egee.org/">EGEE project</a>, funded by the EC initially for two years, aims to build on recent advances in grid technology and develop a service grid infrastructure which is available to scientists 24 hours-a-day. The project aims to provide researchers in both academia and industry with access to major computing resources, independent of their geographic location. The EGEE project identifies a wide-range of scientific disciplines and their applications and supports a number of them for deployment.</p>
<p>For more information contact:</p>
<p>François Grey<br />
IT Communications Team<br />
IT Department, CERN<br />
Tel +41 22 767 1483<br />
Fax +41 22 767 1070<br />
Email: <a href="mailto:Francois.Grey@cern.ch">Francois.Grey@cern.ch</a></p>
</div>
<h3 class="field-label">
Footnote(s) </h3>
<div class="field-footnote footnote-item">
1. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status. </div>
Fri, 28 Oct 2005 08:00:00 +0000coluanai717 at http://press.web.cern.chICALEPCS 2005: Experts in experimental-physics controls meet in Genevahttp://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2005/10/icalepcs-2005-experts-experimental-physics-controls-meet-geneva
07 Oct 2005
<div class="field-body">
<p>Geneva, 7 October 2005. From 10 – 15 October, CERN<sup>1</sup>, and the Centre de Recherches en Physique des Plasmas (<a href="http://crppwww.epfl.ch/">CRPP</a>) of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (<a href="http://www.epfl.ch/Eindex.html">EPFL</a>), will be hosting ICALEPCS 2005, the 10th International Conference on Accelerator and Large Experimental Physics Control Systems, at the Geneva International Conference Centre (<a href="http://www.cicg.ch/fr/">CICG</a>). The meeting’s scientific programme will be complemented by many industry-related events, including technical seminars, a three-day (11 - 13 October) exhibition, and a series of pre-conference workshops.</p>
<p>ICALEPCS is the prime conference in the field of controls for experimental physics facilities, including particle accelerators and detectors, optical and radio telescopes, thermo-nuclear fusion, lasers, nuclear reactors, gravitational antennas. CERN, which is currently constructing the Large Hadron Collider and its experiments, is a major user of such control systems, as are scientists at the CRPP-EPFL, who are in the Swiss Association in the European Fusion Programme and collaborate in the JET and ITER fusion projects. </p>
<p>As well as reviewing control systems projects at major new and planned facilities, including the LHC, JET and ITER, this year’s meeting will cover issues of current concern in the community. These include </p>
<ul><li>
Security and Other Major Challenges, such as handling ever increasing data rates, and operation in harsh environments, e.g. high radiation and magnetic fields</li>
<li>
Development Approaches, e.g. the use of frameworks or toolkits, automated code generation, software engineering and management tools</li>
<li>
Operational Issues, including tools required for efficient operations e.g. logging and archiving tools, man-machine interfaces, and web-based remote operation.</li>
</ul><p>Industry-related events will also form an important part of the meeting. Seventeen companies will feature in the exhibition, and in a series of seminars companies will present their specific solutions to control problems, as being implemented for example with the LHC and its experiments. For more on the industrial programme see <a href="http://ess.web.cern.ch/ESS/ICALEPCS/IndustrialProgramme/">http://ess.web.cern.ch/ESS/ICALEPCS/IndustrialProgramme/</a>.</p>
<p>Falling in the year of the World Year of Physics, ICALEPCS 2005 is a EUROPhysics conference, organized in conjunction with the Experimental Physics Control Systems group of the European Physical Society. It will be attended by 450 delegates representing 160 organisations (laboratories, universities and industrial companies) from 27 countries spread throughout Europe, America, Oceania and Asia.</p>
<p>ICALEPCS 2005 is supported by the Swiss Confederation, who made the CICG available, the Republic and State of Geneva, and the industrial companies Agilent, HP, and Siemens Suisse SA, Automation &amp; Drives. Dell, an ICALEPCS 2005 partner, supplied the entire informatics infrastructure. The Haute-Savoie Département and the Archamps Business Park supported the organisation of three days of pre-conference workshops (6-9 October).</p>
<p>Journalists are welcome to attend events at the conference. For more details of the programme see the <a href="http://icalepcs2005.web.cern.ch/Icalepcs2005/">ICALEPCS website</a>.</p>
<p>To visit or attend the conference please contact one of the following:</p>
<ul><li>
Bertrand Frammery (CERN) Tel: 022 767 4519 or Mobile: +41 (0)76 487 3581</li>
<li>
Jo Lister (CRPP-EPFL) Tel: 021 693 3405</li>
<li>
Axel Daneels (CERN) Tel: 022 767 2581</li>
</ul><p>or call the CICG, Mrs Severine Mondo-Beck Tel: 022 791 91 56, and ask for any of the above.</p>
<p><b>Further information:</b><br /><a href="mailto:Axel.Daneels@cern.ch">Axel Daneels</a><br />
CERN<br />
Tel: +41 22 767 2581</p>
<p><b><a href="http://cern.ch/public/">CERN</a></b>, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's largest particle physics research centre near Geneva, Switzerland. Technological development at CERN has given the world advances varying from contributions to medical imaging to the World Wide Web. Founded in 1954, the laboratory was one of Europe's first joint ventures and has become a shining example of international collaboration. From the original 12 signatories of the CERN convention, membership has grown to the present 20 member states.</p>
<p><b><a href="http://www.icalepcs.org/">ICALEPCS</a></b> is the prime conference for controls in the fields of experimental physics. It takes place every two years and is held successively in the world’s three major regions: America (North and South), Europe-Africa and Asia-Oceania. ICALEPCS 2005 is also supported by the AAPPS, APS, EPS, IFIP and IEEE-NPSS, and Swiss International Air Lines as the official carrier.</p>
<p><b><a href="http://www.home.agilent.com/">Agilent</a></b> is the premier measurement company, advancing electronics, communications, life sciences and chemical analysis.</p>
<p><b><a href="http://www.dell.com/">Dell Inc.</a></b>, is a diversified information-technology supplier and partner, selling a comprehensive portfolio of products and services directly to customers worldwide.</p>
<p><b><a href="http://www.hp.com/">HP</a></b> is a leading global provider of products, technologies, solutions and services to consumers and businesses.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.automation.siemens.com/"><b>Siemens Automation &amp; Drives</b></a> is one of the largest of the Siemens AG groups, providing technology in diverse sectors of industry and trades.</p>
<p> </p>
</div>
<h3 class="field-label">
Footnote(s) </h3>
<div class="field-footnote footnote-item">
1. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world’s leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status. </div>
Fri, 07 Oct 2005 08:00:00 +0000coluanai720 at http://press.web.cern.chCERN receives prestigious Milestone recognition from IEEEhttp://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2005/09/cern-receives-prestigious-milestone-recognition-ieee
27 Sep 2005
<div class="field-body">
<p>Geneva, 27 September 2005. At a ceremony last night at CERN<sup>1</sup>, Mr W. Cleon Anderson, President of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)<sup>2</sup> formally dedicated a Milestone plaque in recognition of the invention of electronic particle detectors at CERN. The plaque was unveiled by Mr Anderson and Georges Charpak, the Nobel-prize winning inventor of wire chamber technology at CERN in 1968.</p>
<p>With the attribution of this IEEE Milestone, CERN finds itself in good company. There are currently over 60 Milestones around the world, awarded to such momentous achievements as the landing of the first transatlantic cable, code breaking Bletchley Park during World War II, and the development of the Japanese Bullet train, the Tokaido Shinkansen.</p>
<p>"It has been my pleasure to have participated in the dedication of seven of these Milestones," said Mr Anderson at the event, adding that all have brought important advances to humanity. "What is being done here at CERN," he concluded, "is of benefit to the world."</p>
<p>Particle physics research was revolutionised in 1968 when Georges Charpak published a paper describing the multi-wire proportional chamber, a forerunner to many of the particle detectors in use at CERN today. This invention paved the way for new discoveries in particle physics, as underlined by Swiss Secretary of State for Education and Research Charles Kleiber. "I am delighted that the IEEE has decided to award a key Milestone to CERN for the invention of the multi-wire proportional particle detector by Professor Charpak and his collaborators in 1968," he said "These developments have led to crucial progress in our understanding of the constituents of nature."</p>
<p>Charpak's invention also made it possible to increase the rate of data collection by a factor of a thousand. The significance of this was underlined by Walter LeCroy, founder of the company that bears his name, who said that Charpak's invention had "transformed the world of the electronics developer." "The advent of electronic particle detectors," he said, "brought the need to store, transmit and analyse data faster than ever before." Many of the developers working for LeCroy are former particle physicists.</p>
<p>In 1992, Charpak, who had been working at CERN since 1959, received the Nobel Prize in physics for his invention. He has also actively contributed to the use of this new type of detector in various applications in medicine and biology. The value of fundamental research institutes such as CERN in fostering innovation of this kind was a recurring theme of the ceremony. "CERN's reputation is based on fundamental research," said the Laboratory's Director General, Robert Aymar, "but the Organization is also an important source of new technologies. In our work we need instruments based more and more on electronics, so that a tight collaboration worldwide in this field is beneficial to science. In turn the developments in our science feed back into the equipment in industry and in the end they appear in your home." The point was underlined by Charpak himself, who stressed the importance of intellectual freedom, saying of his time at the Laboratory, "CERN was a fantastic place because of the freedom I had, which permitted me to do a lot of things that were unexpected."</p>
</div>
<h3 class="field-label">
Footnote(s) </h3>
<div class="field-footnote footnote-item">
1. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status. </div>
<div class="field-footnote footnote-item">
2. The IEEE is the world’s largest professional association dedicated to the advancement of technology. Through its 365,000 members in 150 countries, the society is a leading authority on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics. The IEEE publishes 30 percent of the world's literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields, and has developed more than 900 active industry standards. The organization also sponsors or cosponsors more than 300 international technical conferences each year. Additional information is available at www.ieee.org. The IEEE Milestones were established in 1983 to honour the most significant achievements in the history of electrical and electronics engineering. </div>
Tue, 27 Sep 2005 08:00:00 +0000coluanai725 at http://press.web.cern.chCERN/ITU/UNU help build momentum for African research and education networkinghttp://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2005/09/cernituunu-help-build-momentum-african-research-and-education-networking
22 Sep 2005
<div class="field-body">
<p>Geneva, 22 September 2005. As part of efforts to implement the outcome of the first World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), held in Geneva in 2003, the United Nations University (UNU<sup>1</sup>) in collaboration with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU<sup>2</sup>) and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN<sup>3</sup>) will hold an International Workshop on African Research and Education Networking to promote scientific cooperation with and within Africa, through the development of networking infrastructure. The event, to be hosted by CERN, takes place in Geneva from September 25-27, 2005.</p>
<p>Faster, reliable and more affordable Internet access is widely recognized as one of the key factors for enhancing research and education efforts in African academic and research institutions, which are the target audience for the workshop. For the first time, this workshop brings together representatives of all key stakeholders: African academic and research institutions, international coordinators, funding agencies, grass-roots implementers and industry. "This is an important step since it seeks to share experiences, create synergies and a common platform for cooperation which will lead to a well thought and sustainable solution to bridge the digital divide" emphasized Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary-General of ITU and Secretary-General of the World Summit on the Information Society.</p>
<p>The workshop will provide tangible results, in the form of concrete recommendations for actions, to the Preparatory Committee for the WSIS, which is meeting in Geneva on 12-30 September in advance of the Summit, which takes place in Tunis in November.</p>
<p>As part of its deliberations, the workshop will review major networking initiatives and achievements in Africa, as well as share experiences on successes and failures, with a view to drawing lessons that would promote and strengthen on-going and future initiatives in the continent. "In doing this, the workshop will provide an avenue for candid discussion among the participants," said workshop co-chair Hans Hoffmann of CERN. "These will include telecoms operators, international organizations involved in networking academic and scientific institutions, and donors as well as representatives from African academic and research institutions among the participating countries."</p>
<p>In particular, participants will review results of case studies from participating countries as part of a major feasibility study on a pan-African University Network (AFUNET), funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD). The workshop will also highlight results of recent meetings on extending African university connectivity, organized by Internet2, the US university-led research network developer and the Canadian IDRC (International Development Research Centre).</p>
<p>The objectives of the workshop include consulting with African academic and research institutions on their needs, strengthening collaboration between them and other stakeholders, compiling a report on case studies and agreeing on business principles for a future AFUNET. The workshop will produce a strategic plan of implementation that will be presented to the WSIS Preparatory Committee, and which will form a blue print for the way forward.</p>
<p>CERN, where the Web was born, serves a global community of scientists, and has traditionally supported efforts to provide better network access for scientists in developing countries. CERN supports in particular actions to make contents of publicly funded education and research freely accessible on the web, and to connect all universities with sufficient bandwidth that they can exploit this information.</p>
<p>The workshop at CERN is organized with the close cooperation of organizations promoting international academic and research networks: <a href="http://www.dante.net">DANTE</a>, the <a href="http://www.ieeaf.org">Internet Educational Equal Access Foundation</a>, <a href="http://www.internet2.edu/">Internet2</a>, the <a href="http://www.isoc.org">Internet Society</a>, the <a href="http://www.renater.fr">French national education and research network</a> and the <a href="http://www.terena.nl">Trans-European research and Education Networking association</a>. In addition, the workshop will include representatives of European governments, the European Union, and UN organizations such as UNESCO and the World Health Organization. Representatives from over half of all African countries will actively participate in the workshop. The international telecoms industry and regional telecoms service providers will be also represented, the workshop being co-sponsored by Cisco.</p>
<p>For more information and to consult the programme, visit the <a href="http://cern.ch/event-africa-networking">website of the workshop</a>.</p>
</div>
<h3 class="field-label">
Footnote(s) </h3>
<div class="field-footnote footnote-item">
1. UNU. The United Nations University’s key mission is to contribute through research and capacity-building, to finding original, forward-looking solutions to the most pressing problems that concern the United Nations, its Peoples and Member States. The value of the UNU - as a University, yet within the UN System - is that it not only seeks responses at a theoretical level, but also concerns itself with the down-to-earth need for practical action. </div>
<div class="field-footnote footnote-item">
2. The ITU , headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland is an international organization within the United Nations System where governments and the private sector coordinate global telecom networks and services. It does this through its three bureaus; Radio communication, Standardization and Development Sectors in cooperation and partnerships with its members and sector members. To continue fulfilling its mandate, the ITU has evolved and adapted its structure and mandate over the past 140 years. Today there are 189 Member States and 637 Sector Members. From Africa, there are 53 member states and 81 sector members. </div>
<div class="field-footnote footnote-item">
3. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status. </div>
Thu, 22 Sep 2005 08:00:00 +0000coluanai729 at http://press.web.cern.ch